Poll: 63 Percent Still Favor Path to Citizenship

A new poll released Monday finds that most Americans by a large margin still favor a pathway to citizenship for the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants living in the United States.

According to the survey of 1,005 adults taken by the nonpartisan Public Religion Research Institute, 63 percent favor providing a way to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. That figure is virtually unchanged from two previous polls taken in March and August of this year.

The survey conducted Nov. 6-10 also found that 14 percent of respondents support giving illegal immigrants a way to become legal residents of the U.S. but not citizens, as long as certain requirements are met. Eighteen percent of the poll's participants, however, say they are opposed to granting legal status of any kind support a policy aimed at finding and deporting all illegal immigrants.

Breaking the survey down by party affiliation, 73 percent of people who identified themselves as Democrats support a path citizenship, along with 60 percent of Republicans and 57 percent of independent-leaning respondents.

Sixty-five percent of all the poll's respondents also said they believe the current immigration system is either completely or mostly broken, while 11 percent more now say it is completely broken.

But the Public Religion poll also found that only 41 percent of Americans think that immigration policy reform should be a priority for Congress and the administration.

The poll also incorporated the views of 12 focus groups that were taken in August from among 110 residents of Arizona, Florida, and Ohio. The views expressed indicated that regardless of whether Americans live in a border state or elsewhere, their opinions on the issue are similar.

For example, approximately 60 percent of focus group participants from each of those three states said they support a pathway to citizenship.